Journals are for the Brokenhearted
by Alice in Wonderless Land
Summary: "I didn't want to be right. More than anything in the world I wished I were mistaken." Stefan reflects on Damon and Elena's friendship.


_The Vampire Diaries is my new drug, and Damon/Elena is the needle with which I inject it into my system._

_Love Always,_

_Alice_

* * *

Dear Diary,

I didn't want to be right. More than anything in the world I wished I were mistaken. Every time Damon would make a snide comment, every time Elena would roll her eyes and tell me not to worry. _We're just friends, I'm his only friend, He's not as bad as he thinks he is._ That's all it is. Friendship. Something Damon needed and longed for, despite how often he would insist that he was a loner, someone who needed no one. Well, his constant sexual conquests begged to differ. But it was the closeness of real companionship he needed and it was just that closeness I refused to give him.

Elena sees something in him that I can't see. I've tried, I truly have, and honestly in the past month I've seen a definite change in him. But I'm not sure it's enough for me to let bygones be bygones. No, most definitely not. It's enough for me to let Elena remain around him, enough for me to trust him with her safety. It's enough for me to leave him alone in the house without worrying that he was going to go off the edge.

Elena and Damon's relationship – their _friendship_ – is something I am going to have to get used to. I accepted that the first day I walked into the living room and saw him on the couch with her feet in his lap as they flicked through a book and talked. His eyes met mine, and he smiled that smile that I've become all too familiar with.

"Stefan, my good man. We were just discussing Dostoyevsky. Care to jump in?"

Elena is not Katherine. Elena is not Katherine. That is my daily mantra and Damon knows it. Every time I even so much as voice a slight concern, he repeats it back to me. Elena is not Katherine. What he thinks, I assume, is that this fact will keep his heart safe. Katherine snapped him in half, body and soul. She never cared for him. If she did, she would have come to find him in the past century and a half. But no, she hasn't, and he has only recently learned that his previous reason for living didn't want him back.

This afternoon the phone rang. Damon picked it up with a smooth _Hello_. There was chatter, laughter, an 'okay, bye'. I asked who it was. Just Elena, he said. _Just Elena_, he said, as if it was perfectly normal for my brother to have a friendly conversation on the phone with my lover, my everything. A few minutes later, the phone rang again. I rushed to answer it.

"Hello? Elena?" I asked.

Silence for a beat, then laughter, then her voice, "Hey Stefan. Actually, I wanted to talk to Damon. Is he around? I wanted to tell him something funny…"

I wanted to desperately to be wrong. Every fibre of my being I wanted to be wrong about their feelings. Damon knows about them, he's simply being courteous. He knows he's in love with her. But Elena, she has no idea about his feelings. She has no idea about her own. She is completely oblivious to her love for him, and isn't that the true irony? Our love, our passionate, comfortable love is born out of familiarity, out of instinct, out of kindness. Their love is an enigma. It is borne out of hatred, out of reconciled feelings, out of trust and out of fear of something bigger than themselves.

I wanted to be wrong about this but I am so sure now, so very sure. I am at a loss of what to do because I love her so much that is pains me to my core and I know she loves me as well but Damon has so little love, so little kindness around him and inside of his heart. I don't know if I can discount that, starve it off. It is best to leave the world alone, to leave it as is. It would be best to let nature take its course and if feelings change then that is what is supposed to happen. In my time on this earth I have realised that how someone feels changes dramatically over time.

Damon's soft love for Katherine turned into lust, turned into hatred and insanity. My love turned into coldness, turned into hatred and dismissal. My love for Elena is also subject to change, although at this point it seems to only grow stronger with each passing day.

If their love grows, I cannot ignore it. But if it remains still and slowly fades into the background, then there is no need to broach the subject at all.

I must be tactful for both of their feelings, because the truth remains that they are my everything. My flesh and bone and heart and soul, family and lover. I cannot ruin them.

- Stefan


End file.
